Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Violations Amounting to International Crimes The Status Quo and its Challenges

The article provides an overview of the development of case law concerning corporate accountability for international crimes since the Nuremberg Trials. The authors take into account a wide variety of both criminal and civil law cases, directed either against individual corporate officers or companies as such. Through an assessment of both historical and contemporary cases, the authors assemble an account of the nature of corporate involvement in international crimes. Although substantial international criminal law is well prepared to tackle corporate misbehaviour, enforcement mechanisms, available both at the international as well as the national level, are insufficient. The authors endeavour to analyse the normative and practical reasons for this accountability gap and to offer some possible solutions to this problem.